A Dark Night's Work eBook

the principal personages of the ceremony had filed
into the vestry to sign their names; when the swarm
of townspeople were going out as swiftly as their
individual notions of the restraints of the sacred
edifice permitted; when the great chords of the “Wedding
March” clanged out from the organ, and the loud
bells pealed overhead—­Ellinor laid her
hand in Miss Monro’s. “Take me home,”
she said softly. And Miss Monro led her home
as one leads the blind.

CHAPTER XII.

There are some people who imperceptibly float away
from their youth into middle age, and thence pass
into declining life with the soft and gentle motion
of happy years. There are others who are whirled,
in spite of themselves, down dizzy rapids of agony
away from their youth at one great bound, into old
age with another sudden shock; and thence into the
vast calm ocean where there are no shore-marks to
tell of time.

This last, it seemed, was to be Ellinor’s lot.
Her youth had gone in a single night, fifteen years
ago, and now she appeared to have become an elderly
woman; very still and hopeless in look and movement,
but as sweet and gentle in speech and smile as ever
she had been in her happiest days. All young
people, when they came to know her, loved her dearly,
though at first they might call her dull, and heavy
to get on with; and as for children and old people,
her ready watchful sympathy in their joys as well
as their sorrows was an unfailing passage to their
hearts. After the first great shock of Mr. Corbet’s
marriage was over, she seemed to pass into a greater
peace than she had known for years; the last faint
hope of happiness was gone; it would, perhaps, be more
accurate to say, of the bright happiness she had planned
for herself in her early youth. Unconsciously,
she was being weaned from self-seeking in any shape,
and her daily life became, if possible, more innocent
and pure and holy. One of the canons used to
laugh at her for her constant attendance at all the
services, and for her devotion to good works, and call
her always the reverend sister. Miss Monro was
a little annoyed at this faint clerical joke; Ellinor
smiled quietly. Miss Monro disapproved of Ellinor’s
grave ways and sober severe style of dress.

“You may be as good as you like, my dear, and
yet go dressed in some pretty colour, instead of those
perpetual blacks and greys, and then there would be
no need for me to be perpetually telling people you
are only four-and-thirty (and they don’t believe
me, though I tell them so till I am black in the face).
Or, if you would but wear a decent-shaped bonnet,
instead of always wearing those of the poky shape in
fashion when you were seventeen.”

The old canon died, and some one was to be appointed
in his stead. These clerical preferments and
appointments were the all-important interests to the
inhabitants of the Close, and the discussion of probabilities
came up invariably if any two met together, in street
or house, or even in the very cathedral itself.
At length it was settled, and announced by the higher
powers. An energetic, hard-working clergyman
from a distant part of the diocese, Livingstone by
name, was to have the vacant canonry.